This post was first published by Meredith L. Eaton on March Communications’ blog PR Nonsense.

With more than 200 social networking sites in existence today, it’s safe to say the social sphere is a crowded market. But, with most social network users only maintaining an average of three to five profiles, how can newcomers hope to make their mark on the industry?

Undoubtedly this was one of the questions co-founders and brothers Mike and Red Fabbri asked themselves as they started one of the newest social platforms, prollie.

As a social media analytics and user discovery platform, prollie grades its members on their social media ability and helps uncover their passions while letting them search for like-minded users on their favorite social networks outside of prollie. So, if my passion is public relations, prollie will detect that based on my social posts and interactions. Then, I can search for others who are interested in public relations and see where to follow them (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.).

With ample potential to fuel topical conversations, make user introductions and help businesses target specific markets, is that enough to help prollie stand out from the crowd? According to Mike Fabbri, it certainly seems so.

“We’re not trying to be something we’re not,” Fabbri commented. “We aren’t trying to create another site to commit your day to or add to a to-do list. If we stay true to our users, and the ‘bread and butter’ of prollie, we think it will stand out on its own as a simple extension of your online personality when you need it.”

After recently securing a pretty sizeable round of funding, Fabbri thinks it was their passion for social networking that turned their investors into prollie believers. “We knew what we wanted in social media, and how we were going to build and deliver it. It’s about everyone else, but it was also about us… we actually wanted to use prollie!”

In the analytics space, sites like Klout would be prollie’s natural competitors. However, Fabbri notes that they are not in the game of measuring influence. prollie measures its users’ skill and passion on social media sites, not their popularity. What makes prollie special though is its search functionality. “It’s like a super customized ‘suggested user’ tool. That’s the goal, find others to friend/follow who want and deserve to be found, including yourself,” said Fabbri.

In terms of future plans, Fabbri says prollie would be open to partnering with other major networks like Facebook or Twitter, since, ultimately, they just want their users to have the best social experience possible. prollie aims to be a network-agnostic extension of these sites that helps enhance users’ friend or follower base, so that they can get more out of what makes each network unique and awesome.